The European union and e-democracy: Interactive policy-making initiative (IPM)

There are two major arguments with respect to the European Union's (EU) e-Government initiative in the literature. The first one is that the EU launched e-Europe because information communication technologies (ICTs) could enhance democratic participation. Contrary to this the second position claims that the primary goal of e-Europe is to deliver public services efficiently at lower costs rather than encouraging citizens to take active part in policy making. The problem with the existing literature is that surprisingly students of e-Europe did not analyze the European Commission's Interactive Policy Making (IPM) initiative = which was launched in 2001 in their study before reaching such conclusions. The goal of this essay is to assess IPM with respect to its potential to promote democratic participation and re-assess the EU's position. It is argued in this paper that the EU is an example to the consultative, if not participatory model of e-democracy. In addition to getting regular information about activities of the EU posted on the website, European actors can express their opinions and concerns via the Internet and make their voices heard in specific public policy initiatives. This does not mean that IPM is free from criticisms. Despite the existence of the digital divide in the EU and the problem with 'consultation' practice itself, IPM offers a positive opening for e-democracy. The first section reviews the existing literature on the implications of ICTs for democratic participation in other jurisdictions, which is followed by a brief history of e-Government and e-democracy in the EU since the early 1990s to contextualize the IPM initiative historically in the second section. The third section analyzes the IPM project in detail by describing its components such as consultation, feedback mechanism, and online discussion before discussing the issue of digital divide as well as the problems with the nature of consultation. The last section evaluates findings and implications of IPM for democratic participation in the EU.